How Covid changed science, part 1

The global Covid pandemic was a wake up call for the scientific community. With remarkable speed and agility a massive global effort was soon underway – to turn existing science to tackle the immediate threat of the pandemic and invent new science with a longer term aim of protecting the global population from the new pathogen.

The old ways of ‘doing science’ changed but was that entirely for the better and is such change permanent ?

Until 2020 developing a new drug took at least 15 years. Scientists by and large competed with each other, were somewhat secretive about their research and only shared their data once publication was secured. And the public and the press had no interest in the various early phases of clinical trials. An incremental scientific step possibly on the road to somewhere was simply not newsworthy. Face masks were the preserves of hypochondriacs in the Far East, with no scientific evidence base for their use.
Now the findings of research are published as soon as they are ready, often before they have been peer reviewed they are being openly discussed in social media.

This series documents the key changes in science which the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about.

The speed of research, collaboration between science and industry, and public perception of science are areas that have undergone incredible and likely permanent change. Devi Sridhar asks which of these changes increase or decrease the public’s trust in science. And what the direction should be now for a more joined up global response to infectious disease.

Devi Sridhar, Professor of Global Health at Edinburgh University hears from scientists in a variety of fields, whose working lives and practices have been affected, in some cases revolutionised by the pandemic.